Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum Dies at 92; Leader of the Satmar Hasidic Sect

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Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the spiritual leader of the Satmar Hasidic sect, died of a heart attack yesterday at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.

He was 92 years old and lived in the Kiryas Joel community he founded in Monroe, N.Y., in Orange County.

Rabbi Teitelbaum led two ultra‐Orthodox groups, the Satmar sect in Brooklyn's Williamsburg section and the Neturei Karta sect in Jerusalem and was said to have 150,000 followers.

One hundred thousand people gathered for his funeral service and burial yesterday afternoon in Kiryas Joel, the state police said. Those bound for the service created a massive traffic jam along Route 17 in Orange County.

Dr. Jeffrey Sacks, representing Governor Carey at the funeral, said the Governor had described the rabbi in a telegram of condolence as “a great inspiration and guide to me in the difficult times when decisions had to be made.”

Rabbi Teitelbaum was a consistent opponent of the State of Israel since its founding in 1948, maintaining that only the Messiah could create a Jewish state and that the Government committed sacrilege by such practices as permitting women to serve in the military.

He also opposed Israeli citizens’ taking part in elections. In 1955, he offered food to any Israeli who refused to vote in his country's elections, and, in 1959, he urged his followers in Israel to turn over their identity cards and therefore lose their voting eligibility.

Rabbi Edgar Gluck, a Satmar rabbi, said Rabbi Teitelbaum was born Jan. 13, 1887, in Sigut, Rumania. He founded the Satmar yeshiva movement in the village of Satu Mare in Rumania in 1906.

At the age of 17, he succeeded his father as chief rabbi of the Satmar Hasidim in Hungary and remained their leader until the outbreak of World War II, when he was imprisoned in German concentration camps.

He escaped several times, eventually going to Israel — where he became chief rabbi of the Orthodox Jewish movement there.

Moved to Brooklyn in 1946

He moved to Brooklyn in 1946 and rallied his followers from around the world. His congregation, Yetev Lev, numbered 1,500 families.

In a quest for a self‐sufficient community in the suburbs, Rabbi Teitelbaum attempted to create a colony for his congregation in Mount Olive Township in New Jersey in 1962, but was unable to obtain zoning permission.

The attempts of his congregation to establish Kiryas Joel, about an hour from New York City, encountered some opposition and legal problems over whether the property was being used for multifamily dwellings rather than single‐family homes. The controversy was resolved in 1976 by town officials agreeing to permit the community of Hasidic Jews to incorporate as a self‐governing village on a 340‐acre site. The sect had hoped to incorporate a village on a 450‐acre site.

Rabbi Teitelbaum was sought after by politicians. In 1968, Vice President Hubert Humphrey called upon the rabbi at his home at 500 Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, where several thousand people, many in the traditional black hats and black coats of Hasidic Jews, waited behind police barriers. Mr. Humphrey was campaigning and meeting with Jewish leaders then concerned about tension between some black militants and the Jewish community.

Last March, Rabbi Teitelbaum appeared at a rally at the Felt Forum at Madison Square Garden attended by 5,000 people to protest a road project in Jerusalem they considered an interference with observance of the Sabbath.

He was president of the Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States and Canada, which had organized the protest and a march by about 220 Hasidic rabbis tc the Israeli Consulate following the rally. The congress says it represents more than 250,000 Jews.

Rabbi Teitelbaum is survived by his wife, Feiga.

A version of this archives appears in print on August 20, 1979, on Page D11 of the New York edition with the headline: Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum Dies at 92; Leader of the Satmar Hasidic Sect. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe